1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image display method of displaying a plurality of images on a display screen, an image display apparatus, an image recording apparatus, and an image pickup apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advancement of digital cameras and an increase in capacity of storages and media, the variety of data storable in a storage medium for storing data, such as a memory card, is increased. For example, a memory card stores data of a still image or movie images taken by a digital camera or of a portable document format (PDF) file captured by a scanner. A universal serial bus (USB) memory stores data of a still image or movie images created from a photograph by use of a personal computer (PC) or of a document created by a PC. In addition to such an increased variety of data storable in a storage, uses of such stored data are also increased.
As a result, a technique for enabling a user to smoothly access many diverse data elements stored in a single storage is required.
One example is a method of enabling a user to access data by use of a wheel device. The use of the wheel device allows quicker manipulation than that occurring when a key is pressed, which is normally used. Because the wheel device allows an item to be selected more quickly, it is often used in data searching or setting. There are some methods of using such a wheel device.
One example method is described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-363707. With this method, a plurality of information strings are displayed in response to rotation of a wheel device, a single focused displayed string is selected, and then a rotational device can be used in operation.
A method of searching a large number of images by use of a wheel device is described in US Patent Application Publication No. 2004155907. With this method, if not all images can be displayed on one screen, the images are three-dimensionally represented such that thumbnails of the images are arranged in a circle while a part of the thumbnails may become invisible toward the back of the screen. This allows a user to also recognize the presence of an image being not displayed.
However, the traditional methods described above are not sufficient as a method of enabling access in today's increasing diversity in data.
For example, for the technique described in the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-363707, a plurality of kinds of data are represented as respective circles. That is, to access desired data, it is necessary to search for a circle containing the desired data and select it.
With the invention described in the above-mentioned US Patent Application Publication No. 2004155907, even when the total number of images is large, the images can be represented. However, in that representation, the images are arranged in a single circle, so it requires browsing through the arranged images to search for a target image. Consequently, a problem exists in which it is difficult to reach the target image.